


“Please, come home.”

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I can't imagine what it must have been like for Iduna during her first years in Arendelle, Living Between Worlds, Self-Hatred, a stranger in a strange land, never able to see her family again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23268655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: A painful meditation on Iduna's life and how she survives in Arendelle, a foreign and unfriendly place - cut off from the Northuldra, from the Forest, from her family.
Relationships: Agnarr/Iduna (Disney)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	“Please, come home.”

_Home._

The Forest returns to her in dreams, dazzling and autumnal, but always… always… the crimson flutter of leaves catches true fire. She shakes, wakens – wakens in this land with its foreign banners hanging high – banners that bear the crest she sees in her nightmares, among the blur of spear-carrying soldiers…

She knows her way around. Impish, she darts through the streets, curls up in nooks and crannies, desperately clinging to the brightness of the start of her dreams, though she knows what end will come. What end will always come…

(What end will come to her… in this strange land?)

She hears the thunder of voices after the return. The mourning for the king. Among her people, mourning is a solemn thing, but she sees no solemnity in the distorted faces, in the rage…

The rage against her people.

She joins the cry among the mob – a small and shadowed face.

She hates herself for doing it, but they are so many. Their hands are so great. Their faces as heavy to her as the giants of the Forest…

She must survive…

Hot tears spill down her cheeks, and the mob thinks them tears for the king and not tears for the mother she will never see again…

How she hates herself… The sobs rack her body and soon they are not tears for Runeard or for her mother, but the tears of her own shame – her own disgust with herself.

(Traitor.)

She knows she is not, knows she must survive, but she _feels_ it –

She screams obscenities at the shadow of her own people and it hardly matters for her voice is lost among the voices of the mob – but it matters to her.

Her legs buckle in some dark alley and she weeps truer tears.

A warm hand touches hers.

She looks up and sees the golden-haired boy she saved. The son of the king.

He cannot know why she weeps. He cannot know. Her heart pounds within her chest, but she collapses into his embrace, and he holds her…

A moment’s peace.

In the end, this moment has a mirror – the ship cracking under them, Iduna holds Agnarr close – still hardly knowing if she is true to herself or true to her survival –

(No. True to herself. Finally homeward bound. Willing to die for those she loves. All the walls she ever built in her life fallen away. That brings her peace.)

But even in that moment’s peace, the craggy remnants of those walls she built weigh down her heart – and she half-hates herself for all the beauties she has known, even in the face of knowing so much misery…

She is irreproachable.

Her people would say it. The spirits would say it. Her family would say it.

But in this last moment, she cannot say it of herself.

She is both a noble queen facing death and a scared child remembering her mother’s lullaby.

_Drowned._

A fractured thing, like the splintering ship.

The water engulfs her.


End file.
